


And Every Homestead Holds a Ghost

by ryfkah



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Ensemble Cast, Gen, Gen Fic, Ghosts, Misses Clause Challenge, Post Season 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-24
Updated: 2011-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-27 23:42:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/301357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryfkah/pseuds/ryfkah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It began with the cold.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And Every Homestead Holds a Ghost

**Author's Note:**

  * For [newredshoes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/newredshoes/gifts).



It began with the cold.

It was comfortable enough when Anna came into Lady Edith's room, and she had been warm already with the effort of turning mattresses and hauling blankets. She went through the familiar motions of making up the bed, so lost in her own weary thoughts of John's upcoming trial that it took her a few moments to notice she was shivering. Her hands felt frozen as they pulled away from the feather quilts.

She turned around, and saw it.

“I don't believe,” she told it, very carefully, “in ghosts,” and heard her voice shake as she said it. Later, she would think on how stupid it had been to say it out loud. Perhaps if she had said nothing, but only pretended it was not there, it would have gone away again.

But she'd said it, and of course, in Downton, there was always somebody to hear.

“What's that, Anna?” asked Sophie, the new maid, sticking her head in. She stared. Then she screamed.

A moment later the temperature had returned to normal, and the apparition was gone – but the scream had done its work, and Mrs. Hughes was already hurrying down the hall to demand an explanation.

“Anna saw it too,” Sophie said, weakly. “Didn't you, Anna? Tell her I'm not barmy – you saw it too!”

She wanted to deny it with all her heart, but Mrs. Hughes was frowning in the way that meant someone was going to get a very stern talking-to, and she couldn't in good conscience let Sophie receive a black mark. “I did see something,” she admitted, feeling Mrs. Hughes' doubtful gaze on her. “I couldn't rightly say what. Don't blame Sophie for taking a turn. There was something.”

Mrs. Hughes looked from one to the other and sighed. “Well, perhaps a bird got into the house,” she said. “I can see how it would startle you, but you must try not to create a disturbance. There's nothing there now, anyway, and no reason not to get back to work.”

“Yes, Mrs. Hughes,” said Anna, glad to escape the discussion.

“It wasn't a _bird_ ,” muttered Sophie, when she'd gone. “I know what a bird looks like. Do you think I'd go into fits over a bird? On my first week here?”

“Best to forget it,” suggested Anna, but she knew it was a lost cause; by the time she came downstairs for supper last night, everyone was asking her if she really had seen a ghost.

***

“Well, there's a few people it might be, aren't there?” Thomas said, lounging at his ease in the servant's hall. “My money's on the Turk, for what it's worth. Can't imagine he's happy how that all turned out.”

“No one told me the place was haunted when I took the position,” Sophie said. “No one told me there had been a mysterious death. All I'm saying is I wouldn't have taken such a start, if I'd been told.”

“Place wasn't haunted before you got here,” remarked O'Brien, without looking up from her newspaper. “Maybe it's you the ghost wants.”

“Hark at all of you!” Mrs. Hughes came in, shaking her head disapprovingly. “I don't know what Mr. Carson would say if he heard this.”

“Mr. Carson was down here earlier,” said O'Brien, “and he was right quiet.”

“Maybe he'd seen the ghost,” suggested Thomas, and they shared a smirk.

“It isn't funny,” said Sophie, darkly. “He very well might have.”

***

“Is it true?” Mary asked Anna.

Anna kept carefully brushing out Mary's hair, one long stroke after the next. “Is what true, my lady?” she asked, though she already knew the answer.

“This story they're telling about a ghost.”

For all the differences between the sisters, Edith's room and Mary's room were very like; same great mirrors, same grand beds with the same grand canopies that billowed with the least movement.

“I couldn't say, my lady,” said Anna. If it was cold, it was only because it had been a long time since the fire was set.

“How is that possible?” asked Mary, impatiently. “You're the one who either saw it, or didn't.”

“I don't know what I saw, my lady,” said Anna, quietly. She had been perfecting her poise in the presence of the family since she came to Downton, ten years back. There was little that could shake it now. “I saw something, and it frightened me. But it might well have been nothing.”

Mary twisted herself half round to look at Anna, and Anna let go of her hair lest it pull. “Don't give me that,” Mary said, less patient still. “You're one of the least easily frightened people I know. If you saw something, then for God's sake, say it.”

“It wasn't anything I recognized,” Anna protested. She tried to keep her eyes on Mary, and not to look at the mirror; a mirror could make anything look queer. “Nothing like a person. It was – it was silly, my lady. I'd rather not talk about it.”

“I know what they're saying downstairs,” Mary said. “About Mr. Pamuk. You needn't think you're sparing me that.”

“I did _not_ see Mr. Pamuk,” said Anna.

“Well, I should hope not. It would make him a terribly tardy ghost; the man died years ago,” said Mary, dryly, and then: “What are you looking at?”

“Nothing, my lady,” said Anna, wrenching her gaze hastily back from the mirror to Mary's face. “Your – I think I brushed some of your hair the wrong way in the back.”

“I suppose that's a hint,” said Mary, and swung herself back around. “Well, go on, then. If you don't want to talk about it, I won't force you.”

“Thank you, my lady,” said Anna, and picked up the hair brush again, taking deep breaths to calm herself. A mirror, she told herself again, could make anything seem queer.

Mary concentrated on the soothing feel of the brush through her hair, and did not mention the pale image she'd seen, out of the corner of her eye, as she passed through the hallway an hour earlier.

There was a knocking on the door, and then Lady Crawley came in, with a mother's indelicacy, without waiting for the summons. “Good lord,” she said, and drew her shawl tighter around her. “Is it me, or is it awfully cold in here?”

***

“What I can't think,” sighed Mrs. Hughes, sitting in Mr. Carson's office, “is how _Anna_ could have come to start such a rumor. She's always been so steady. But I suppose with all the worry she's had – and nerves can show up in unusual ways.”

“You think it was nerves, then,” rumbled Mr. Carson.

“Well, I don't see what else it could be. Unless, of course, one subscribes to belief in the terrible ghost of Downton.” She looked up with a smile, expecting to see it reflected, and was surprised instead to find his face still and grave.

“What if I told you, Mrs. Hughes, that I'd seen something that I might have called a ghost? Would you put it on nerves as well?”

If Mrs. Hughes were to make out a list of the people she would think most likely to see things that weren't there, Mr. Carson would fit in somewhere between the Dowager Duchess and the Prime Minister. “It would be my first inclination, I must say,” she said, cautiously. “But after the Spanish flu, I suppose I ought to think twice before saying anything with you was only overwork.”

Mr. Carson snorted. “Well, it isn't the flu again. I'd know that twice.”

“That's a blessing, at least.” Mrs. Hughes hesitated. “Where did you—”

“In the sitting room. I didn't say anything,” he added, seeing Mrs. Hughes' worried gaze. “And I won't to anyone else. Whatever it is I saw, the last thing we need is more rumors to be spreading downstairs.”

Mrs. Hughes' shoulders relaxed a little. “I couldn't agree more.” She didn't know what to make of this sudden plague of respectable, trustworthy people seeing things she knew were impossible; she did know that it would not make running a household any easier. “Though,” she added, allowing herself a faint gleam of mischief now the tricky part was settled, “I should really think you'd be pleased for the honor of Downton, Mr. Carson. I thought all the greatest houses had a ghost.”

“Mrs. Hughes, if it can't make a bed,” said Mr. Carson – he looked a little unburdened, as well, as if it had done him good to confess to her – “and can't serve brandy, I don't want it in this house.”

***

Daisy was whisking the custard for trifle when she quite abruptly burst into tears. “What if it's William?” she wept, as the whisk fell to the counter. “What if he can't rest proper because of the lie?”

“Can't be William,” announced Mrs. Patmore, and yanked the custard pan safely out from under Daisy's nose and over to a different burner.

“But you can't know that, Mrs. Patmore!” Daisy bawled.

“I can so,” said Mrs. Patmore, “and so could you, if you'd use your head half a moment.”

Daisy gulped and rubbed her nose on the back of her hand; Mrs. Patmore, finally taking pity on her, relented. “Now, you tell me,” she said, “where Anna and Sophie first saw that ghost.”

“In Lady Edith's room,” quavered Daisy.

“And there you go, then.” Mrs. Patmore gave Daisy a firm clap on the shoulder, without shifting her eyes from the saucepan. “Truth to tell, I'm ashamed to hear you speaking so ill of the departed. Our William would never think to hang about in one of the lady's bedrooms, dead or alive, and I'd like to see what Mr. Carson should say if he did. Now hand me that whisk, will you? This custard's like to turn out lumpier than your nose.”

***

Molesley had no good reason to be at Downton, and he knew it. There was no one who wanted him there, not after his shame the night that the flu came – but Mr. Crawley needed him as little as ever, and there was only so much idleness he could bear. He was lurking in the hallway, trying to get up the courage to approach Mr. Carson for some help-work, when he heard something behind him.

It took him a moment to realize that what he had heard was not sound, but sound's absence. Downton was a loud, crowded house. There was always noise. But now there was nothing but a listening quiet, and a whiteness creeping around the edge of his vision. It was like fog. It was like France, he found himself thinking – but of course he had never been, which was why he was alive.

He reached up and felt his forehead. It was damp and clammy. He was ill, he thought; he had been truly ill this whole time after all, and none of it had been his fault. “Hello?” he whispered, hoping to dispel the silence.

There was no response except the rising chill.

“Hello?” he called out again, louder. His fingers clutched together convulsively. He could not turn around. He could not turn around. He could not turn –

“Mr. Molesley? Whatever are you doing here?”

It was Mrs. Hughes, always so kind. Her voice was gentle, despite it all, and he felt his fingers un-twist.

“I was only stopping by for a moment,” he said. There was nothing there. He had been foolish. But still, he felt, uneasily, that he should not stay.

***

It was cold outside, but then, there were places it was near as bad inside. O'Brien lit her cigarette off Thomas' and drew in a lungful of meditative smoke.

“They're all in an uproar, all right,” said Thomas. “Wild to see them, en't it?”

“Wild,” said O'Brien.

“I'd forgotten,” said Thomas, “how much it could be like the Dark Ages back here sometimes. A ghost's nothing to be afraid of, not after you've seen France.”

“Nor I imagine it isn't,” said O'Brien.

“And them all running scared. A real laugh, isn't it? Catch me,” said Thomas, with perhaps too much emphasis, “running from a ghost.”

“You've not seen it, then,” said O'Brien.

“Can't have,” said Thomas, a shade too quickly, “if ghosts don't exist, can I. You?”

“Can't have,” said O'Brien. “If they don't.” She took another drag on her cigarette, and thought of Lang. He'd not written. One didn't know what a man that afflicted might do, if life got hard enough.

They avoided each other's eyes, and smoked in silence.

***

When Mary opened the door to her room the ghost was right in front of her.

It was hazy and pale and cold. She'd always thought the cheesecloth and pantomime you saw in the theater so ridiculous, and yet she could see, now, how one could think it the best way to approximate the creeping, indistinct otherness one felt upon seeing it. The best way imaginable by the human mind and yet not like, nothing at all like.

Before reason could stop her, she held out her hand and whispered, “Lavinia?”

The ghost didn't answer. There was nothing about it that was particularly identifiable as Lavinia; it was barely identifiable as human. And yet Lavinia, too, had been pale and silent and indistinct, or so Mary had thought her at first. She had come into focus only when she smiled.

“Lavinia,” she said again, voice catching in her throat. “If that's you – please. I know I don't deserve it, I know we were unforgivable, but –”

“It isn't Lavinia.”

Mary turned around, quick as a viper, but it was of course far too late. If there was anyone in the world she least wanted to come into a room and find her attempting sentimental communion with a ghost, it would be –

Well, in fact, probably it would in fact be Sir Richard Carlisle, but Edith came a very close second. She could feel tension freezing the muscles in her face to a mask.

But Edith did not seem to be here to press the upper hand; her face was pale, anxious, and, apparently, sincere. “It isn't Lavinia's ghost,” she said again. “It's mine.”

“That's an interesting theory, Edith,” snapped Mary – sarcasm always came easier with Edith than anything else – “but seeing as how you're very much alive, I'm not quite sure how you came by it.”

“I don't mean like that,” said Edith. She had the sharp set to her lip and chin that said she wasn't going to back down, no matter how Mary needled; Mary had always associated it with primness. “But I've seen it since I was little. It's been my ghost for years.” She glanced up at the ghost, and then away; there was discomfort in her face, but long familiarity and a kind of possessiveness too, and something about the combination put Mary very much on edge. Nobody should want to lay claim to thing as wrong as that. “It would listen to me when nobody else would. I would talk to it at night about – oh, all the things that had been horrible that day. How horrible _you'd_ been, mostly.”

Whinging about her petty troubles to a ghost was so much the kind of thing that Mary thought Edith _would_ do that it was easy to keep her voice light. “If it's your ghost, what _has_ it been doing lurking around hallways and frightening the servants? I hadn't thought you'd go in for that kind of joke.”

“I've been – neglecting it, I suppose.” Edith looked down, her fingers twisting into each other. “The soldiers were all here – there was so much to do – people listened to me, seemed to hear me. I couldn't spend so much time telling it my wrongs.” The ghost was a creeping white shadow in the corner of her eye. Mary imagined long pale fingers, creeping out to caress Edith's hair as she cried, and suppressed a shudder. Edith said, “I would go to my bed at night and go to sleep.”

“You've kept quiet all this while,” said Mary, slowly. “Why speak up now?”

“I couldn't,” Edith said, with an awkward, unexpected earnestness that made Mary feel like the coldest person in the world. “I _couldn't_ let you think it was Lavinia. It would be too cruel. To you and Lavinia both. I didn't know Lavinia well, but she seemed very nice and as if she did have a mind.” She attempted a smile. “It would be awful to be thinking of her hanging around Downton forever, as if she had nothing better to do.”

“Touche,” murmured Mary. She sent a sidelong glance at the ghost to see if it would react to this slight upon its character and post-death pursuits, and felt herself draw in a quick breath. It had been drifting close to her as she listened to Edith; only years of self-control allowed her not to take a step back. Now that she knew it was not Lavinia, she felt, absurdly, almost disappointed, and she held onto that feeling rather than the other, which was fear.

It appeared diffuse, and yet she could see nothing through it. If you let it reach for you, wrap itself around you, there would be nothing real at all – nothing except grey cold. She tried very hard not to imagine it.

Edith was watching it too. “I don't think,” she said, suddenly, “that there's a way to say this that you won't take wrong. I'm not gloating, I swear. But if I were you, I would be careful. It likes lonely people, and I think you're nearly as bad as I am these days. Maybe worse.”

Mary had to smile at that, bitterly.

She couldn't stay here, with Edith and her ghost. She brushed past her sister through the doorway, more forcefully than perhaps was necessary – but she did owe Edith something, and so she turned and touched her fingertips to Edith's arm. “Thank you,” she said, finding that she meant it, and had at least the satisfaction of seeing Edith's startled face before she turned and kept walking down the hall.

She didn't think she was in real danger from the ghost, now she knew what it wasn't. This was the difference between them: for better or for worse, Lady Mary Crawley had far too much pride to whisper her woes to anyone, even a ghost.

All the same, she found she did not want to look back, in case she saw it trailing behind her.

***

“The real trouble is that it's made all the servants so _jumpy_ ,” said Cora, with a sigh. “Even O'Brien – and you know how steady O'Brien is usually – she was white as a sheet this morning, and dropped _three_ hatpins.”

Edith and Mary found themselves exchanging a glance, and then hastily dropped their eyes.

“I think it's all rather exciting,” announced Lady Violet.

“Of course _you_ would, Granny,” said Mary, forcing a light laugh. “There isn't a ghost in the county that would dare cross your path.”

“On the contrary,” said Lady Violet, “I have always entertained a great interest in the World Beyond.” She took a placid sip of her wine. “Though I must say, it's very inconsiderate of the spirit to appear _now_ that Spiritualism is wholly out of fashion with the better class of person – you must recall the séance we did with Mrs. Mering, Robert. If I recall, you were quite taken with the daughter.”

“ _Seance_?” said Cora, incredulously, and Robert flushed.

“Of course it would never have done,” Lady Violet said, ignoring Cora's interjection with the ease of long practice. “Very vulgar family, and then there was that scandal. I always used to warn my acquaintances with daughters never to hire a handsome butler.” Mary snuck a sideways look at Carson, who remained poker-faced. “It's a pity,” Lady Violet added, “that I didn't think to extend the caution to chauffeurs. But of course, at the time, we had coachmen, and the _smell_ was more than enough of a barrier to a grand passion.”

Nearly everyone at the table was now breathlessly watching Robert, who looked about ready to explode. Unfortunately, the first one to leap into the breach to deflect the conversation was Isobel Crawley, who said brightly, “I've always thought the phenomenon of Spiritualism was remarkably interesting, from an outside perspective. Grown adults – famous scientists and writers, even – sitting around at tables listening for someone to rap at a table. It's amazing how a fad can quite turn somebody's head, isn't it?”

“Of course, Mrs. Crawley, one could never imagine _you_ witnessing any visitations from the next world,” said Lady Violet, her tone a masterpiece of kindly condescension.

“I should like to think I've too strong a mind to be vulnerable to that kind of illusion,” said Isobel, with a smile.

“Strong,” retorted the Dowager Countess, “is certainly _one_ word for it.”

“You've got to hand it to Granny,” murmured Mary to Matthew later. “Only she could manage to turn the ability to see ghosts into a sign of good breeding.” Matthew laughed, and Mary thought how grateful she was to her grandmother, for making her able to view the whole thing as ridiculous.

***

Sophie was asleep, but the ghost didn't seem to want her anyway.

It slunk steadily closer to Anna's bed, misty and indistinct and yet somehow imprinted on the dark, like one of the shapes you saw when you closed your eyes. Anna lay very still. “Go away,” she whispered, “go _away_. I don't want you.”

The ghost did not care. It had infinite patience.

Anna tried to close her eyes and ignore it, but she only saw white fog when she did, and her back twitched and crept with the expectation of being touched. She sat up straight, instead, suddenly furious. “I don't know what you are, but I can tell your type,” she hissed. “I've known people like you, who couldn't let others' misery alone. Well, it's no more attractive a quality in a ghost. You leave us be, you hear?”

The ghost kept on coming, inexorably, and the room felt colder than ever. Anna crossed her arms over her chest. It was tempting to speak loudly, so as to wake Sophie – somehow she felt the ghost could not be so strong, when there was more than one person to see it – but she kept her voice low; Sophie would have to be awake in the morning, and it would be unkind to rob her of her sleep. “You're in the wrong place, anyway,” she went on, trying as hard as she could to make herself believe it her own words. “I'm _not_ miserable. I've made my own choices, I know what they are. I shan't regret them, whatever happens. There's nothing for you in that.”

There was a certain power in saying things, she had always found. She would become stronger as she spoke, and less unhappy. She was not saying anything that was not true. “So you see there's nothing for you to feed on,” she said to it. “I'll see to it. And if you go on hanging around here, I swear I'll find a—a priest and have you exorcised.”

The ghost was not ready to be exorcised. It hung above her, like a lover, so close now that she could not see anything beyond it – not the window, nor the old comfortable furniture, nor Sophie's sleeping form – and she felt herself, despite all her best efforts, near choking on the lump in her throat. Wasn't she alone, when she should not have been alone, and unhappy when she should have been happy?

 _Give your misery to me,_ the silence seemed to whisper, _and I will give you my coldness. Give your misery to me; I will take it._

“ _No_ ,” said Anna. Her misery was hers, and so was her happiness too. She had chosen it all, and she wouldn't give up any of it. Mustering all her courage and tying it up with anger, she leaned over and gave the ghost a _shove_ , as hard as she could.

Her hands burned with cold, but the white hovering shape by the bedside scattered like steam hit by a clear jet of air.

Anna wrapped her hands in her blanket and waited a few moments, to see if it would come back. Sophie sighed and turned over in her sleep. Somewhere further along the corridor, a board creaked as someone got up to use a chamber pot. The ghost showed no signs of reappearing, and Anna lay down in her bed.

She didn't think it was gone for good. God knew there were enough people in this house with miseries of their own. It was gone for the night, though, and perhaps for now that was enough.

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from Isabelle Banks' poem _Haunted!_ Mrs. Mering and her scandalous daughter come from Connie Willis' _To Say Nothing of the Dog._ The ghost comes from nowhere in particular, although I'm sure it has a story of its own.


End file.
